The Berkeley-based nonprofit program, formed by a partnership between Bayer HealthCare and the City of Berkeley, celebrated its 20th year with a gala April 3 at the California Academy of Sciences.

The 20th anniversary event was emceed by Alameda County Supervisor Keith Carson and featured keynote speaker Suzy Jones, the founder of DNA Ink, a life sciences business development and licensing firm and the former head of Genentech Inc.'s business development group.

But the real focus was "underserved" East Bay high school and community college students, some of whom prepared poster presentations for the event.

In its 20 years, Biotech Partners has used its specialized biotech curriculum to train and support youths with paid internships and classroom learning for careers in the life sciences.

In all, the program has educated more than 2,000 East Bay high school and community college students and placed more than 1,000 into paid bioscience internships. It has a 100 percent high school graduation rate and a 100 percent college acceptance rate.

The event also gave Biotech Partners a chance to recognize others as well: Berkeley's YouthWorks program (Premium Partner award), the Joint BioEnergy Institute, which is working on next-generation biofuels, and the SynBERC synthetic biology research center at the University of California, Berkeley, (Exceptional Mentoring Awards), and retired Berkeley High School and Biotech Academy teacher Amy Hansen.

Biotech Partners also used its Special Volunteer Award to recognize Bayer employees who serve as intern mentors and supervisors, classroom presenters, science fair judges and more. The company has provided job training for nearly 500 Biotech Partners students and 50 of the program's graduates have been hired by Bayer.